


Deltas

by plsnskanks (orphan_account)



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, I Wrote This Two Years Ago, and it will never be finished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 18:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18036695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/plsnskanks
Summary: there really isn't all that much to say





	Deltas

**Author's Note:**

> cont of: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10064336
> 
> or rather the second half of what was going to be a longer work.

Patricia is cowering against the wall as Paula stands between her and a absolutely livid Tori. As soon as she had heard the news upon returning from her mission Tori’s entire demeanor changed.

Rage washed across her features consuming them and converting them to something demonic. She screamed and flew into a rage, punching holes in walls with her metal hand. She only stopped when she hit a pipe and it ruptured, spraying her with a jet of cool water. Pulling her hand out of the wall, Tori stormed out of the briefing room but not before turning to her two second in commands.

“Find her. Alive. Bring her back. Alive. Or you can be sure you won’t be,” Tori gritted out. She went down the hall and open her office door. The window was open. She never opened her window. The room was cold and frigid as a result. Tori began glancing around the room, looking to see what else was out of order. 

Her eyes landed on the picture frame where she had kept one of her only pictures of Tamara. She always hated pictures. Refused to smile for them. Pulled nasty faces. So when Tori had seen her, staring off into the sunset, looking peaceful, looking happy, she had taken that picture. And treasured it. She printed it out and saved it for years. Kept it with her on long nights as a reminder she couldn’t go home. She couldn’t face Tamara.

And now it was gone.

Just a note in its place. Tori picked it up. Read it. Turned it over searching for something, anything more. Any sign that this wasn’t the end. That this wasn’t the path where their lives forked, never to merge again. She was met with empty space and something in her shattered. Tears leaked down across scarred skin as Tori collapsed into her chair.

All the anger was drawn out of her in a moment and she lay hunched over her desk cradling an empty photo frame. After what felt like hours she pulled herself together. She felt better after crying. Lighter. Freer.

She had always hated crying. She used to cry all the time back in school. Tamara would tease her for it. That’s probably how most of their fights started initially. Tori started holding back her feelings and turning to anger more quickly as she aged. Sadness was useless. Anger was action.

She felt neither at the moment. Instead she felt hollow. She had built her iron throne, sat upon it and when she had reached out to Tamara to accompany her, she’d nearly been killed for it. What had all this been for? 

This world vision she had transformed into a reality. With her regime in place no one starved, no one went without work, no one died dirty deaths in the gutter. She had always promised herself that she would come back for Tamara, after the dangerous and dirty business had been dealt with. 

That she could make amends and repair their relationship. She needed Tamara somewhere safe. Somewhere far away where she wouldn’t get hurt. Where she couldn’t see Tori’s real face. Isn’t ironic that it slipped out from under her mask either way. 

Tamara would never love the person Tori was deep down. She would never fall in love with the twisted monstrosity beneath her frail human visage.

Tori had forged her heart of steel. She had made herself cold to the slaughtering of others as a waypoint forward. She had needed to. It was dog eat dog and she would not die the death of a mongrel. Tamara however, was different. Or at least, she had thought she was.

Tamara who cried late at night for years on end about her brother. Tamara who always got a bit choked up at saying goodbyes. Tamara, Tamara, Tamara with her heart of glass. Maybe she had earned this for shattering it. After all, a glass heart when broken is just a bunch of shards to slit the throat of those who spurned its owner.

Warmth was returning to her as she thought about how hard Tamara had fought to kill her. How desperately she had struggled to even mortally wound her. It’s like she said. Hatred was all that was left between them. But it had grown from the rotting corpse of love.

And she could resurrect it. She could defy the laws and rules of reality. She alone. Because she was Tori. She had died on the operating table they said. She would die of infection. The burns would see that she never walked again. All these finite hurdles surmounted by sheer will. And her will to live was nothing in comparison to her desire for Tamara. The black eyed girl with the bitter smile and the sharp tongue. 

It wasn’t over. Tamara was the deluded one if she thought it would be that easy.

Tori straightened herself up taking the note and folding it into her pocket. She whistled a three note call and in an instant three guards had appeared in her doorway.

“Permission to enter granted. Suspect likely left through the window. Start the search here. Afford as many hands as we can reasonably allow. Understood?”

Tori was met with three simultaneous salutes. She had meetings all this week, but as soon as they were over she would be out there herself, looking for her. She walked out of the room, head held high, eyes full of the kind of fire that raged across open plains, unquenchable and unstoppable, leaping across roaring rivers and leaving nothing but ashen daydreams in its wake.

Miles away Tamara was still running, well aware of the flames licking at her heels.

\---

Her heels are cut and bleeding from the rocks in the fields. Her legs ache and burn. But she’s done it. She’s reached asylum. Tamara looks at the stretch of asphalt road yawning out in either direction. Down one side, she sees those far off lights in the distance, a little bigger and a little brighter. She starts to walk toward them. The asphalt is cool under her feet. A shiver wracks its way through Tamara. She feels vulnerable for the first time since her escape.

Tori, undoubtedly, will be furious. Furious at her arrogance. At her will and desire to disobey. At her desire to fight back even after all these years. That’s what she had liked about Tori. She had this crushing desire for good. She would do almost anything to achieve it. It made her terrifying, sure. But it was so genuinely human as well. Tori was hard to the world. But deep down her desires were soft and pure. She wanted to protect the weak, shelter the vulnerable, rehabilitate the sick.

And she would root out anything that prevented her from doing so. Tamara had merely watched in awestruck horror as the news headlines read execution after execution of high ranking officials, a gain of territory by the red leader, and then there on the news, standing tall, standing proud, with blood on her boots and this odd sort of grin, would be Tori. Her hair whipping like wildfire in the air while actual flames towered behind her, leaping up to silhouette her figure. She had gone from an old friend, to a lover, to a legend, a name whispered on the streets in tones of hushed terror seemingly overnight.

Tori had become the collective nightmare of their slowly smoldering world, her rage at the imbalance stoking the flames of a bloody revolution back to full life.

Tamara joined the counter revolution to quench those flames. To bring blunt the edge of a revolution that was quickly becoming a massacre. She knew it was a matter of time before Tori was killed. She lived to close to the edge, put her hands too deep in the rising body count. They were stained in guilt and guilt meant people had scores to settle with her. Tamara decided if anyone could settle a score with Tori, it would be her. 

Upon learning her connection to Tori, one so intimate and long-lasting, the counter revolution eagerly took her in and groomed her to be the spear that would bring the revolution collapsing in on itself.

That had worked out well.

Half alive, they had both met, half alive the two of them, and by the end of it at best, they would burn each other out. Consume each other wholly.

Tamara walks on, following the asphalt line, she can feel the leftover warmth of the day through the soles of her feet. Above her the stars fade in and a the wind blows through and sometime in the distant night a stranger comes along and takes her away.

Two headlights cutting through the dark and like that the tide recedes with promise of return.


End file.
